Edited by Arne Ziegler, Stefanie Edler and Georg Oberdorfer
[Studies in Language Variation 27] 2021
► pp. 227–252
This chapter focuses on spatial and social variation in the colloquial everyday speech of three German-speaking urban areas. The basic question is whether geographical variation (the kind that is commonly observed in studies on dialect variation in large areas) is detectable in the reported everyday speech of the spatially much smaller, yet denser urban areas as well. To this end, we use methods of quantitative dialectology to examine the patterns of variation in the Ruhr Area, Berlin, and Vienna. The respective analyses of the spatial patterns of 245 linguistic variables from a total number of 4,251 informants yield clear – but remarkably distinct – patterns of areal variation for each of these three urban areas. To account for those differences, social variables are factored in.
For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].